Every year, juniors organize a farewell for the seniors as they set off on a journey of a lifetime. At our school, it is a tradition to not only make farewells memorable but also meaningful and an event where everyone comes together: Teachers, juniors, seniors, and rest of the school community. For me, being given the opportunity to organize such an important day for our seniors was a thrilling yet vexatious experience. It taught me things which I wasn’t expecting to learn and like it is said, every time you step out of your comfort zone, you surely learn things about yourself and others which you didn’t even know existed.
L1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
Few of my strengths which I think helped me the most throughout the event were patience and the ability to let go and forgive. These strengths surely sound misplaced for the event but honestly speaking without these, I could have helped a lot in ruining the event. I always had to keep my peace and if I hadn’t, a lot of chaos might have been created. These strengths helped me to become a better leader and even if I didn’t initially have a grip on them, as the event shaped, they flourished. I recognized that one area that I could work on was to communicate clearly with my colleagues and motivate ALL of them. During the event’s preparations, there were people who didn’t feel enthused enough to work for the farewell but I wouldn’t blame them as I consider it my duty to give everybody a reason to work.
L2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
One of the biggest challenges I faced as a coordinator was to keep all my classmates motivated when their work was rejected due to various reasons and policies of our school. There were times when the ideas and work was jettisoned on which everybody had worked really hard, spent hours in fact. At such crucial times, I had to console the people involved and at the same time dig for solutions. The usual way out was to have good communication skills and somehow convince the school authority to accept the ideas by negotiating and coming to a consensus. I developed some great coaxing skills in this process.
It was a task to get the whole grade to work together and that too just before the exams when everybody was stressing about their studies and sometimes it felt like the 2 coordinators were the only ones working. Because of this, I learned to manage time after going home and at school too because there were so many hangout groups to coordinate with and we had exams to prepare for as well.
L5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively
As the coordinator, I had to take care of all the different departments like food invitation, decorations, logistics, video makers, dance team, anchors, and teachers. Food department was a new department for me as I had previously organised other school events and dealt with the rest except for this one. I learned how to decide the menu, what things were to be kept in mind, what would everybody prefer, and balance this with the budget. Working with the department heads, I realized how easy the work was done by organizing the student body well. Working together, we were able to exchange many innovative ideas and with varied perspectives, we ended up making the event a success.
